Everyone who plays Dungeons & Dragons is familiar with the races described in the Player's Handbook. These races provide a player with one of the character's most basic parts of their identity. Needless to say, the races are essential in Dungeons & Dragons. However, the “crunch” of these races assume that the character grew up in what could be called normal conditions for its race. A dwarf character is assumed to have lived underground or at least near the mountains, has trained in fighting orcs and giants, and has at least some experience in forging metal. But what if the player wants a dwarf character who was raised by nomadic orcs? Then the crunch of the dwarven race would be moot for that character.
To combat this problem, I would like to suggest another bonus: the cultural bonus. Whereas racial bonuses represent traits the character was born with, cultural bonus represent the traits the character gained when he was growing up. So, to take the example given above, the dwarven character would still have stability and resistance to poison and spell-like abilities, but he would not have stonecunning, bonuses when dealing with metal, or special bonuses when fighting orcs and giants. Instead, he would gain other bonuses to represent his upbringing.
You're probably thinking now: "Which bonuses would such a character gain instead?" The alternative bonuses would be up to the player, with the consent of the Dungeon Master, of course.
It might be hard to determine which racial bonuses can be considered cultural bonus and which racial bonuses are still racial bonuses. Simply put, anything that a character is “born” with is a racial bonus, and anything that a character has to learn is a cultural bonus. See the spoiler below for more information on cultural and racial bonuses for the races described in the Player's Handbook.
An interesting side effect of the introduction of the cultural bonus is the added versatility of the races. Whereas a subrace was needed to represent a difference in culture, you can now simply shift the cultural bonuses to better represent your character's culture. (I'm sure this would drastically decrease the number of elven subraces out there.)
Which racial bonuses are cultural bonuses?
Humans: The humans' versatility (their bonus feat and skill points) are cultural bonuses. Therefore, humans are the perfect representation of the cultural bonus.
Dwarves: Stonecunning, weapon familiarity, the racial bonus to attack rolls against orcs, the dodge bonus to Armor Class against giants, and the racial bonus to Appraise and Craft checks that are related to stone or metal items.
Elves: Weapon proficiency.
Gnomes: Weapon familiarity, the racial bonus on saving throws against illusions, the bonus to the Difficulty Class of illusions, the racial bonus on attack rolls against kobolds and goblinoids, the dodge bonus to Armor Class against giants, the racial bonus to Craft (alchemy) checks.
Half-elves: The racial bonus to Diplomacy and Gather Information checks.
Half-orcs: Half-orcs have no racial bonuses which can be treated as cultural bonuses.
Halflings: The morale bonus against fear effects, and the racial bonus to attack rolls with thrown weapons.
Dwarves: Stonecunning, weapon familiarity, the racial bonus to attack rolls against orcs, the dodge bonus to Armor Class against giants, and the racial bonus to Appraise and Craft checks that are related to stone or metal items.
Elves: Weapon proficiency.
Gnomes: Weapon familiarity, the racial bonus on saving throws against illusions, the bonus to the Difficulty Class of illusions, the racial bonus on attack rolls against kobolds and goblinoids, the dodge bonus to Armor Class against giants, the racial bonus to Craft (alchemy) checks.
Half-elves: The racial bonus to Diplomacy and Gather Information checks.
Half-orcs: Half-orcs have no racial bonuses which can be treated as cultural bonuses.
Halflings: The morale bonus against fear effects, and the racial bonus to attack rolls with thrown weapons.
Also--I think--ideally the racial bonuses of the races should still be more or less balanced once the cultural aspects are drawn out. At first blush, my inner min-maxer is thinking "elf raised by humans!" or "half-orc raised by absolutely anyone but half-orcs!" (not that half-orcs couldn't use something to make them more attractive).
More so, half-elves and half-orcs are already (often) "raised by" some other race; to really flesh this idea out might take a bit more work to make it all internally consistent.
Finally, to pick nits, the flavor text for gnomes +2 craft(alchemy) claims that it's because of their well-developed noses, which I think would be a racial, rather than cultural, trait.
My current character is a human raised by gnomes, and I've been shooting myself in the foot the whole campaign trying to make the character reflect that. This would be a good alternative, although for balance purposes, I would say that the human cultural bonus should only be their extra skill point, a feat is a awfully powerful, especially compared with the other cultural bonuses.
My Dwarven Barbarian suffered the sad fate of meeting his end to a bulette. Fortunately, he was reincarnated by a friendly druid and returned as a Satyr. Now, without your post, the DM and I had several discussions about what I should or shouldn't get to keep from my previous incarnation. Without your post, I lost all the dwarf fighting benefits (vs giants and humanoids) but retained the Dwarf weapons as Martial weapons, and I lost the craft and appraise skill bonus' for stone and metal and stonecunning. Having read your post and forwarded a link to my DM, I have managed to renegotiate my modifiers and bonuses.
Having read the reincarnation spell, it would appear that this is a missing section of Racial abilities for the clarification of learned and physical bonuses a Race starts with.
I applaud this well reasoned and well thought out post. It applies common sense to the generalised heading of "Racial Modifiers"
.Part of the background of D&D is Tolkien's milieu, where dwarves and elves are somewhat magical. A dwarf's appraise, a gnome's facility with illusion, and a halfling's natural optimism are not cultural, but part of the inherent magic of the race. I think it would be a sad thing to lose this in exchange for homogenous mechanics, which is what the 3rd edition has partly been all about.
The real problem is with reincarnate, please see my post on the "Magic and Spells" board under "Reincarnate" for my reasoning.
A few ideas that would have been better.
1) If this is an article about cultural bonuses. Don't just highlight the bonuses in the PHB that are cultural, give us a list of new ones outside the norm, such as nomadic cultural bonuses to races as opposed to mining/mountain dwelling races. Also, suggestions on balance for cultural bonuses. IE, if a nomadic dwarf looses stonecunning, what bonus do they gain (i.e., stonecunning could be part magical or, more likely, an indication of how hard working and dedicated to their jobs dwarves can be - would a nomadic dwarf possible gain horsecunning - ability to appraise horses (know their condition - high spirited or nag), gain bonuses to ride skills and training skills for horses?).
2) If it isn't so much to suggest new cultural bonuses outside the norm, then come up with a list of purely racial bonuses that stand alone without cultural influence and show us how these are balanced and why they should be kept. You're spoiler list indicates cultural bonuses that can be removed, I'd rather see racial bonuses that are inherent because of race and outside of culture.
Its a good idea, I've played with this myself and do have cultural bonuses (its a throwback to the fact that I like to play old Al-Qadim and the races there come from a much different culture than stock PHB races). An article saying you can change things is one thing, but more suggestions and ideas about the changes that can be made including some real crunch would have made this a great article for me.
For example, if I were to create a culture of scorpion-herding waste wanderers within my world I'd introduce the following feat:
Waste-Wanderer of the Al'Khadar [Cultural]
You were born and raised in the treacherous sands of the Al'Khadar desert, and, against all odds, you and your people have learned to thrive
Benefit:
- Vermin Herder: You have the ability to handle vermin just as you would a stray dogs. You gain the ability to treat vermin as creatures of the animal subtype for the purposes of using the Handle Animal skill. Any trained vermin may know a maximum of 3 tricks. You gain a +2 bonus on Handle Animal checks when dealing with these creatures.
- Heat Endurance: You gain a +4 racial bonus on Fortitude saves made to resist the effects of hot weather.
- Weapon Proficiency: You receive the Martial Weapon Proficiency feats for the scimitar, the kukri, and the shortbow (including the composite shortbow).
- +1 racial bonus on attack rolls against dragons.
- +4 racial dodge bonus to Armor Class against monsters of the dragon type. Any time a creature loses its Dexterity bonus (if any) to Armor Class, such as when it’s caught flat-footed, it loses its dodge bonus, too.
- +2 racial bonus on Survival checks: the gauntlet that is the wastes of Al’Khadar has left you with a strong drive to live and survive.
Special: You may only take this feat at the first level of character creation.
I believe a system like is truly a breath of fresh air – it shifts the focus from the race to the culture. And, IMHO, it’s much easier to populate a world with many vibrant cultures then it is with races (it also seems to fit better logically as well).
Granted, as Pmurray said, when introducing a system like this you really take away from the fire of a standard race – sure, it may be rare in the world to have a character raised by another race but it would not be rare within the confines of the adventuring party – this system, as Magocrat said, is a method for creating characters of one race who act like another. If I were playing in a group as a dwarf, and a human character was just as good as I am at fighting giants and orcs and working with metal, I would be rather ticked.
So the problem with applying something like this to the standard races is that right off the bat the races themselves are poorly balanced, and they are probably balanced when looking at the whole of their abilities – not just bits and pieces of the abilities they're granted. For example, dwarves may have a ton of “cultural-esque” abilities, but these are balanced in part by a dwarf’s 20 foot speed.
In closing I think this is a great idea but would also entail a lot of work. Why not, instead, introduce a series of feats that confer some of these bonuses (similar to the quick-cut feat I have presented)?